NO DOUBT POSSIBLE

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXXIII, 2 January 1941, Page 5

NO DOUBT POSSIBLE

NAURU RAIDER’S DISGUISE MR HUGHES’S COMMENT CANBERRA, 31st December. The Minister of the Navy, Mr Hughes, stated that the flying of the Japanese flag on the raider that shelled Nauru Island could not be anything but compromising and unprecedented at a time when Japan is attempting to strengthen her relations with Australia. The reports received by the Naval Board from Nauru made it impossible to doubt that the raider was sailing under the Japanese flag right up to the time of her attack. “Our information places it quite beyond doubt not only that the Japanese flag was flown but also that the ship had the name of the well-known Japanese vessel conspicuously painted on her and was dressed in all ways to resemble th* Japanese ship,” he said. It was not till the raider manoeuvred to bring her guns to bear on the island that the Japanese flag was replaced by the Nazi flag and simultaneously Nazi flags were dr tpped and displayed over the sides of the ship and from the mast, but while the ship was shelling the island the Japanese ship’s name was not obscured “I imagine that in this case the Germans will have a great deal to explain to Japan,” Mr Hughes added. MINISTER’S “AXIS BOOM” TOKIO, 30th December. Mr “Billy” Hughes is temporarily enjoying an Axis boom.' The Domei news agency quotes the official German news service as noting with approval Mr Hughes’s statement in Canberra that the raider which shelled Nauru Island hoisted the German flag before the bombardment. The Germans say that Mr Hughes has “definitely refuted reports attributable to enemy propaganda that the raider was flying the flag of a friendly nation. German warships, of course, carry out their duties against the enemy under the German flag.”

The Berlin correspondent of the “Nichi Nichi Shimbun” reports that Germany admits the bombardment of Nauru, but denies that the raider flew Japanese colours. (Mr Hughes in. his statement referred to emphasised that it was typical of the enemy raider that she never approached British merchant shipping under her own colours, but always under the colours of a neutral or friendly Power).